THE FISCAL CRISIS OF THE CAPITALIST STATE.

It is now widely acknowledged that the long period of economic expansion that the Western capitalist societies enjoyed in the aftermath of World War II has come to a halt. Since the mid-1960s all of the developed capitalist societies have experienced greater economic difficulties in the form of higher rates of unemployment and inflation. The principal way in which these economic difficulties have entered into sociological discussions has been through the fiscal crisis of the state. Through the period of post-war expansion, government budgets rose steadily as all the developed capitalistic states took on greater responsibility for providing social services and economic infrastructure. Even with rapid economic growth, state expenditures as a percentage of gross national product rose because of these growing state responsibilities. Exploring the incidence and causes of fiscal crisis leads towards a fiscal sociology, a systematic examination of the principles governing the volume and allocation of state finances and expenditures and the distribution of the tax burden among various economic classes. Not only are there relatively few comparative studies of the growth of state expenditures, but even finding a workable definition of fiscal crisis is difficult.